Week 12 - UGA Preview

This preview won’t be as thorough as usual. My apologies. I know all my readers (both of you) will be devastated. But, its Thanksgiving, and I’ve been “relaxing”.

Also, you may have noticed no Duke review happened. I may or may not get that up at some point. The gist is we started flat and never really played inspired football. Even still, we beat them worst than the final score indicated. We just found ways to keep it close. Oh well, it was a win.

But, enough of that. On to the real game.

Georgia may be the best team we have played all season. If you believe the computers, they are the best team we have played all season.

And they appear to me to be playing their best football late in the season (doesn’t it seem like this always happens with them?).

Let’s take a look to see just exactly how the computers view UGA and GT. I’ll use Sagarin. Below is a chart showing how UGA actually did in its games, how Sagarin thinks UGA should have done based on the rest of the season, and how GT would have done according to Sagarin.

The reason I include how UGA “Should have” done according to Sagarin is that it allows you to see where UGA’s good and bad games occurred. So you can see whether they really are peaking.

UGA Opponent	UGA Result	UGA Expected Result	UGA Actual - UGA Expected	GT Expected Result Against Same Opponent
Boise St.	Loss by 14	Lose by 6	-8	Lose by 16
South Carolina	Loss by 3	Win by 4	-7	Lose by 6
Coastal Carolina	Win by 59	Win by 43	+16	Win by 33
Ole Miss	Win by 14	Win by 21	-7	Win by 11
Miss. St.	Win by 14	Win by 12	+2	Win by 2
Tennessee	Win by 8	Win by 9	-1	Lose by 1
Vanderbilt	Win by 5	Win by 8	-3	Lose by 2
Florida	Win by 4	Win by 7	-3	Lose by 3
New Mexico St.	Win by 47	Win by 30	+17	Win by 20
Auburn	Win by 38	Win by 16	+22	Win by 6
Kentucky	Win by 9	Win by 25	-16	Win by 15

Coastal Carolina and New Mexico St. appear to be clear outliers. So I’ll discount them. Clearly, UGA can perform better than expected when they have physically overwhelming talent. Doesn’t tell us much.

If you ignore the Coastal Carolina game, then UGA started the season with 3 of its 4 worst performances of the season. Then they settled in and played about as expected for a few games, before exploding against Auburn for by far UGA’s best game of the season.

So they went from bad to average to really good.

Of course, then they played their worst game of the season against Kentucky. Maybe they were flat. Who knows? But up until that game, I see a clear UGA trend of playing better as the season progresses.

Also of note, GT allegedly would be 6-5 against UGA’s schedule. Although, Auburn, Miss. St., Tennessee, Vanderbilt and Florida would be very close games. We would be 4-2 in decisive games with 5 close ones. For whatever that is worth.

Here is a look at the same chart from GT’s perspective:

GT Opponent	GT Result	GT Expected Result	GT Actual - GT Expected	UGA Expected Result Against Same Opponent
Western Carolina	Win by 42	Win by 35	+7	Win by 45
Middle Tenn St.	Win by 28	Win by 22	+6	Win by 32
Kansas	Win by 42	Win by 16	+26	Win by 26
UNC	Win by 7	Win by 2	+5	Win by 12
NC St.	Win by 10	Win by 1	+9	Win by 11
Maryland	Win by 5	Win by 13	-8	Win by 23
Virginia	Lose by 3	Lose by 1	-2	Win by 9
Miami	Lose by 17	Lose by 9	-8	Win by 1
Clemson	Win by 14	Tie	+14	Win by 10
Virginia Tech	Lose by 11	Lose by 3	-8	Win by 7
Duke	Win by 7	Win by 10	-3	Win by 20

So, you’ll notice we are playing worse as the season progresses. Not good. And I don’t really have any idea why. But its a clear trend. We did better than expected in our first 5 games, and worse than expected in the rest except the Clemson game.

You’ll also notice some things that may surprise some people. Supposedly, we were supposed to tie Clemson at home. In other words, Clemson was not really all that good.

We were also supposed to lose by 1 and 9 to UVA and Miami on the road. Maybe those were not the “upsets” we thought they were. In hindsight, those results maybe were fairly accurate.

Also of note, supposedly UGA would be unbeaten against our schedule. My guess is they would have slipped up and lost to somebody. Miami, UVA, Clemson and VT all would have been losable games, and I bet they would have lost at least one. But they probably would have a record better than 8-3.

Sagarin predicts that UGA wins this game by 7 points. Unfortunately, that is basically in line with what I expect. I would like to be able to make a good argument for why we win, but I just don’t see it.

UGA’s run defense is MUCH improved and very good. I am holding out hope that they are still not very disciplined, so maybe we can have some success with the option and forcing them to bust assignments. But they will be hard to block.

They are also the best running attack (probably) that we have faced all season. Their O-Line may not be much better than UNC, UVA or VT, but its probably at least as good. We will have our hands full trying to stop their rushing attack. And of course, they can play action and have Aaron Murray throwing it, who is one of the better QB’s we have seen this season.

We will need a very good effort from our defense.

And special teams has the potential to be disastrous, per usual.

In short, we will need to play a very good game in all phases in order to win.

On the plus side, its a rivalry game. Many people say “in a rivalry game, you can throw out the records and the stats... none of it matters”. And they say that for good reason. In a rivalry game, teams get renewed passion. It does not really matter if you have been playing poorly lately because you lost a couple of games and threw away a chance at the conference title. In a rivalry game, its pretty easy to forget everything else. Winning makes the whole season better, no matter what else is happening.

Additionally, UGA may be distracted somewhat by the SEC title game they have next week.

Finally, they probably expect to win. So we may have a motivation advantage.

We will need all of those advantages to come true, and still play a good game in order to pull the upset.

My official prediction, sadly, is a close game that UGA wins in the end, just like the last 3 years.

Hope I am wrong.

Let’s Go Jackets!!